For patients with acute or chronic kidney disease, some uremic toxins can be removed by extracorporeal renal replacement treatments, for example, hemodialysis. In contrast to unbound uremic toxins, protein-bound uremic toxins are difficult to remove by dialysis, because only the free (unbound) fraction of uremic toxins generally passes through the membrane of a dialyzer.
Consequently, there is a need for a new method of removing protein-bound uremic toxins during hemodialysis and other renal replacement treatments.